


made of all the little bones

by deerie



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Near Future, Rebuilding the Hale House
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-17
Updated: 2013-07-17
Packaged: 2017-12-20 10:58:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/886458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deerie/pseuds/deerie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Stiles lowers himself down into a squat and bites at the skin on his thumb. He keeps swiveling his head back and forth to look down the length of the outside wall. “Um,” he finally says, eyes seeking out Derek automatically. “So what would you say if I said that the measurements aren’t lining up exactly?”</i>
</p>
<p>House of Leaves AU</p>
            </blockquote>





	made of all the little bones

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "The Woods" by Daughter.

Stiles first notices the discrepancy when Derek drags out the blueprints for the old Hale house and they begin to measure the original foundations of the crumbling wreckage. It’s just the two of them working, because this is delicate and Derek doesn’t know if he can handle the entire pack stomping through his childhood home, casting judgments and inserting teenage opinions where they aren’t wanted. Stiles, though - Stiles knows what it is to lose. 

The sky is gray and while he thinks that it should be cold, there’s a warm breeze filtering through the trees. It’s disconcerting. 

Stiles looks down at the measuring tape in his hands and frowns down at the number it displays.

“Hey, Derek,” he begins slowly, mouth twisting unhappily. 

Derek shoots him an annoyed look but still grunts out, “What?”

“What did you say the measurements on this room were?”

“Seventeen by twenty.”

Stiles hums under his breath and steps through a crumbling section of the wall to measure the room from the outside. 

Derek watches him warily as he steps back through the wall and measures the room on the inside again. 

Stiles, for once, stays quiet as he works. It’s a little unnerving, Derek thinks. Usually Stiles babbles as he does everything, but now - well, now, he’s utterly silent.

He looks confused and a little bit spooked and it’s an expression Derek has never seen on his face, at least not in the house before despite the fact that it’s little more than ash and dust and rotting wood at this point. 

Stiles lowers himself down into a squat and bites at the skin on his thumb. He keeps swiveling his head back and forth to look down the length of the outside wall. “Um,” he finally says, eyes seeking out Derek automatically. “So what would you say if I said that the measurements aren’t lining up exactly?”

“What are you talking about? The foundations should be more or less the same, even with the damage.”

“Well,” Stiles huffs, “then there’s something weird going on.”

Derek feels his eyes roll heavenward and wishes that for once something would go fine without something _weird_ coming in and messing it all up. After he’s got his exasperation back in check, he motions for Stiles to explain.

Stiles nods succinctly and says, “So when I measured from outside of the house, it came up normal. Seventeen by twenty. But when I measured from inside the room, it -” he pauses, obviously struggling to find the right words to say. 

“What, Stiles?” Derek asks impatiently. 

“It’s bigger on the inside.” As if realizing what he’s saying, he rushes out, “I swear to God I’m not making a Doctor Who joke. There’s an extra five feet of space on either side. Twenty-five by twenty-two feet.”

“What.” 

“Measure it yourself if you don’t believe me! It would’ve been one thing if it was a couple of inches and the inside was smaller than the outside! But there is an five extra feet on either side inside this room and I can’t figure out why or how the inside measurements are more than the outside ones.”

Stiles starts to work himself into a panic, so Derek takes the measuring tape from his hands and redoes the measurements.

Stiles is right. 

Derek looks around the room and then back at Stiles, who breathes in big lungfuls of air, and walks over so he can press a big hand to the back of Stiles’ neck. He doesn’t look too hard at the fact that this almost immediately calms Stiles down. 

Stiles stands up shakily and now that he knows Derek is on the same page, asks, “How?”

Derek shakes his head, he doesn’t know, but he tugs Stiles closer. Stiles goes willingly and Derek thinks, _human_ , but mostly he thinks _pack_ , because that’s what Stiles is, even if he doesn’t realize it. Stiles is more _pack_ than some of his wolves. 

They stand in the middle of the old living room, pressed side to side, and wonder. 

 

 

“Hey, so I found this old chest down in the basement,” Stiles wheezes, part of his weight on the chest in question because he’s somehow managed to drag the thing up the stairs to the main floor. 

Derek brushes away the mild annoyance he feels at Stiles not asking him for help and goes to look at the chest. He doesn’t recognize it and he’s been through everything that managed to make it through the fire. 

“Where in the basement?”

Stiles pushes himself up to stand and says, “In that little room - well, closet - off of that main room, that tort-” 

He stops himself, but Derek can fill in the blanks - that torture room where Kate Argent chained him up. 

Stiles looks apologetic, but Derek waves him off because there is no closet off of that room. He doesn’t tell Stiles that yet, just leans closer to catch the scent coming off the chest. It smells mildly like the fire, like it managed to miss the worst of it, and Derek thinks he can smell his father’s cologne on it, but that’s not what makes him rear back, offended. 

“What?” Stiles asks, brows lowered in concern. “What is it?”

“I don’t know,” he says, honestly. “It smells wrong.”

“Wrong like,” Stiles tries to lead, “what?”

“I don’t know,” Derek repeats. 

Stiles reaches out and presses a hand to Derek’s shoulder, soothes, “Okay, it’s okay, I didn’t open it or anything, we’re good right?”

Instead of saying what he means to, Derek says, “There’s not a closet off of the main room down there.”

Stiles cocks his head and shoots him a quizzical look. “Uh, dude, yes, there is. I was just in it. Pitch black, but definitely a closet.”

Derek shakes his head in disagreement. “No, I’m pretty sure living here for sixteen years would qualify me to say what rooms there are and aren’t in this house. There is no closet.”

Stiles pulls his arms back and crosses them, a stubborn set to his mouth. “Yes, there is.”

Derek motions to the empty space in front of him. “If this is the main room,” he says, and then gestures behind them, “and that’s the crawl space to the outside, then there is the big sliding door and a hallway off to the right that leads to the rest of the tunnels.”

Stiles nods and then says, “Right, and then there’s a closet over to the left here. Look, Derek, I can show you if you don’t believe me.”

Derek raises his eyebrows as if to say, _lead on_.

Stiles lets out a huff and goes back to the stairs, looking back once to make sure Derek actually follows. When Stiles is sure he is, he clambers down the stairs. Derek takes his time following him.

Derek makes it to the bottom just as Stiles lets out an excited whoop. “Look, I told you, man, it’s right here!”

Stiles spins around and gestures back at the brick wall behind him. 

“Stiles,” Derek says, and he must really look concerned because Stiles gets this weird look on his face. “Stiles, look.”

Stiles turns back around. Derek can only make out his profile, but he watches as Stiles’ expression absolutely crumples. He reaches out before Derek can stop him and his hands hit the solid wall. 

“It was - it was just right here a second ago!” 

Stiles hits the brick with a closed fist and suddenly the sharp tang of blood is on the air. Derek takes the two steps across to Stiles and gathers Stiles away from the wall, both hands wrapped around Stiles’ injured one. 

He can’t help but scent the wall. It smells like the chest. Somehow, Derek can’t find it in himself to be the least bit surprised. 

Derek looks down at the scraped skin across Stiles’ knuckles and how the wounds are still sluggishly bleeding and says, “We should take care of this.”

“I’m not making it up,” Stiles says instead. “There was a closet down here, Derek, I’m not making this up.”

It’s Derek’s turn to sooth, so he does. “I believe you,” he says, and tugs Stiles back up the stairs, past the chest, through the living room, and out to Stiles’ Jeep. There’s a first aid kit under the passenger’s seat, so he fishes it out and opens it up on the hood. 

Stiles is staring back at the house with a puzzled look on his face. Derek can admit it, he doesn’t like the look of confusion on Stiles’ face. It doesn’t sit right on his face and Derek is shockingly used to looking to Stiles for some sort of answer, even if it isn’t the right one. 

Derek brushes Stiles’ knuckles with disinfectant and the sharp sting is enough to bring Stiles’ attention back to him with a hiss. “I believe you,” Derek repeats.

Maybe they should take a break from the house. Derek has his apartment, so it’s not really like restoring the Hale home is that pressing of a matter. He could make Stiles take a week while he finished up all the measuring and planning, and then they could just call in the contractors a couple weeks early. 

Stiles huffs out, “It’s not that bad, Derek,” when Derek begins to wrap his hand in gauze, but Derek levels a glare that makes him go silent. 

Derek could make Stiles stay away if he really wanted. Derek might not hold the same amount of sway over Stiles as he does his betas, but he does hold enough that if he really wanted to do something about it, he could. 

The thing is, he doesn’t want to. He could make Stiles stay away, sure, but he knows he’d also wreck whatever it is between them. Stiles might stay away, but he wouldn’t respect Derek and Derek isn’t sure he could look Stiles in the eyes if he did that to him. 

Derek puts the first aid kit up when he’s done and Stiles picks at the edge of the bandage. One hip is hitched against the Jeep and there’s still an unhappy tilt to his mouth. He says, “I want to look in the chest,” at the same time Derek takes the coward’s way out by saying, “I need to speak with Peter.”

Stiles stiffens immediately and Derek is ashamed to admit that what he says has the desired effect. 

He can’t make Stiles do anything, but he can ask anyway. “Please don’t look in the chest until I speak to Peter.”

Even a year ago, before the alpha pack, Derek would have punctuated a statement like this by pushing Stiles into the nearest hard surface, intimidate Stiles a bit. They’ve been through enough now that it’s unnecessary. Somehow Derek fits into the circle of people that Stiles actually cares about and it’s a lot unnerving, but Derek is glad he’s there. It means he can mark his words with things like _please_ and press his hand to Stiles’ shoulder and Stiles will do what Derek wants. 

It feels a little bit like taking advantage, but Derek never claimed to be a good person. He knows Stiles isn’t either and he knows that Stiles hates being pandered to more than he hates the flush that comes with praise, so Derek doesn’t try to be anything other than he is. 

Bringing up Peter was a low blow, but an effective one. Peter had lived in the house for a lot longer than Derek had and if anything weird had gone on in the house, he would be the person to know about it. Peter has always been a magnet for the weird even before the fire. Whether or not Peter would want to give up any information _now_ was another matter entirely. 

Stiles worms his way into Derek’s arms for a hug, arms reaching all the way around Derek’s back until he can hook his fingers together. Derek wraps his arms around Stiles’ shoulders and thinks _Stiles_ and then _pack_. His pack is young, still teenagers, and they seek physical contact often, even Stiles who doesn’t have the same driving instinct that the wolves do.

Derek takes a step back, turning them gently, and peers up at the ruins of where the proud Hale house once stood. 

The house looks back.

Derek isn’t looking forward to speaking with Peter.

**Author's Note:**

> This has been sitting in my WIP folder probably since the end of Season 2. I want to revisit this piece in the future, but I'm not one hundred-percent sure how to execute what I want to do with this fic and I don't want to give you anything less than what it should be. 
> 
> I have a lot of ideas, though. Maybe I should read House of Leaves again.


End file.
